Creative musings in bright colors

Posts tagged ‘magnetic’

This was simple but a lot of fun to wear! I figured that pairing a magnetic polish (and magnetizing it sideways) with a weird 1920’s style stamp would look awesome. Voila! Of course, it also gave me an excuse to play with a cool new-to-me stamping plate from MoYou’s steampunk collection.

Hope you enjoyed! I know there are only two photos, but when there is no sunlight AND my nails are tiny I don’t tend to take as many pictures!

(just FYI: I am moving these next two weeks, and there is a chance that I don’t get around to editing nail art and posting. I will be back! But if the blog is post-less for the next twoish weeks it is because I am moving and did not appropriately edit nail art in advance!)

Time for a top 10 post! Every year I do two of them: my favorite 10 new polishes of that year (some of which will be new to me but have existed for a while, and this year about half of which are from the Polish Pickup Pack because that is where I keep getting new polish), and a second post that is my top 10 favorite nail art from this blog in 2018! I always look forward to other bloggers top 10s as well, so I know which polishes to buy! Here we go:

10. Zoya – Isadora
I think this is the only Zoya polish on the list, but it was close between this and Kelsey (a bright pink that I have used a bunch in nail art but only once by itself) but really I felt that I wanted to reward Zoya for making more beautiful metallics. I own a lot of purple metallics, and Isadora is just so pretty!

9. Polished for Days – From the Land of Oz
I have worn this polish probably 4 times since I got it from the Polish Pickup Pack, which given just how many polishes I own is really impressive! It is purple, blue, teal, and made of flakies, just how I like it! The colors and finish comes together nicely, and Polished for Days appears to make the best flakie suspension polishes. I think off all the new brands I discovered this year, PfD might be my favorite! I keep stalking their website waiting for a sale :-p

8. Ever After – Playing with Fire
This is another find from Polish Pickup, and it is a beauty. I wish I wasn’t stuck in residency so that I could wear this more frequently! I had been searching for a black-with-rainbows and had been disappointed in holo (because it never looks as rainbow as I’d like in a black base), glitter (too darn hard to remove), and settled on flakies…and this is just perfect. Technically the base is a very dark blue but I just cannot get over the combination of flakies. It is a perfect rainbow in a bottle.

7. Painted Polish – Just One Look
Is this prettier than #8 and #9 on my list? No. But is it cool looking AND can I wear it to the hospital? Yes. So this pale periwinkle with medium and small holo glitters takes 7th place. This is yet another Polish Pickup shade (are you guys sensing a theme here?) but I know other brands make similar colors and finishes. I happen to like it because it is a stunning color, work appropriate, and glittery to boot!

6. ILNP – Downpour
This polish. I got 4 new dark blue/teal holographic polishes this year and this one takes the cake. I have been wearing this on my toes since I got it and I regret nothing. Downpour has it all: dark blue, holo shards and glitters, and a metallic finish that makes it glow. That inner glow is really what sets it apart from the other of my new blue holos. I was on the fence when I first received it, but it has quickly grown to be the blue I reach for! The only caveat is that it takes 3 coats rather than 2.

5. ILNP – Fired Up
The next on the list is also an ILNP polish, this time Fired Up. Last year, Rosewater made my top 10, and Fired Up is the orange sister to Rosewaters pink. I love them both! This polish is just so darn glittery and shimmery, but somehow still wearable. It just makes me happy.

4. CbL – Frohe Feiertage!
If we are being honest Frohe Feiertage! and Fired Up are very similar. The difference is Frohe Feiertage! has a gold base and is a tad more subtle (aka more wearable in the hospital). I have worn this polish 3-4 times as well. It was my first (and thus far only) CbL but I can see why everyone loves the finish on these polishes! It was also a Polish Pickup buy.

3. Born Pretty – Astral Realm
I think this is the first time a Born Pretty polish has made my top 10 list? And in the top 3 at that! This is a polish I was sent to review and I fell completely in love. I have ok luck with magnetic polishes, and had been lusting after a magnetic multichrome when I got this. And it just. Works. Its amazing. Even my old many-straight-parallel-lines magnet, which usually looks like a blurry mess, worked like a charm. Yes, this polish requires a black base. Yes it is in a small bottle. No I don’t care, if all magnetics were all this pretty I would never buy anything else!

2. Emily de Molly – Traverse the Skies
I meant to put this polish on the top 10 LAST year but forgot that I hadn’t posted the nail art it went with! Regardless, this polish is absolutely stunning and has become my platonic ideal of what a shimmer with flakie shards should look like. I love it. If you don’t own this polish and like blue, purple, silver, or just pretty looking nails in general, go buy it. You won’t regret it.

1. Polished for Days – Grey Opal
This polish made #1 by dint of being stunning, elegant, work-appropriate, and easy to remove despite its flakie burden. Kudos to Polished for Days! Unfortunately this beauty was another Polish Pickup special, but PfD makes a lot of similarly finished and colored polishes on their website. This polish was opaque in two coats, had perfect control on the brush, and was just overall wonderful to work with and wear.

Thats my top 10 for the year! Moral: Polished for Days is amazing, join the Polish Pickup Pack if you haven’t already, and I am really into nude shimmers and blurples this year! What were your favorite polishes this year that I should invest in?

Ok, so, I love this mani. I love how it looks, I love the colors, and I LOVE the magnet! I got a new magnetic polish from the Born Pretty Store to review…and somehow, unlike every other magnetic polish I own, this one works like a charm. Maybe I am just getting better, but the design on my pointer finger stayed looking perfect for three days. Most magnetic polishes just can’t do that!

Anyway, this is two coats of Astral Realm over black. The first coat was thin and the second coat was thick; I magnetized both times (and again when I put top coat on, although the magnetic particles didn’t actually move). Astral Realm is a multichrome magnetic. I was doubtful at first, but its actually true! The shift is a bit more subtle than pure multichromes of the same color range, but it is definitely there. This polish shifts from a bright fuchsia to pink (the primary colors) and then to orange and gold. I even saw hints of green at sharp angles!

I got a whole bunch of compliments on this at work. People were stopping me as I was typing on the computer to ask me how I got my nails to look like this :-D. I also love the stamps! When Whats Up Nails had their stamping sale, this is one of the 6 plates (oops!) that I picked up! I bought it on a whim but it has turned out to possibly be my favorite of the bunch. Stars! Moons! A super fancy sun! Anyway.

It is rare that I only use three colors in a mani, especially when only two of them are visible! But the magnetic polish was cool enough that I thought adding anything else to this would be a waste.

That’s all for today! I hope you enjoyed! In case anyone was curious…my pinky I just magnetized the very edge of my cuticle, for the ring and middle I used one of those strong magnetics to make a line (diagonal vs horizontal), my pointer I used a repeating diagonal line full-nail magnet, and my thumb I pushed around the polish using the rounded head of a strong double-sided magnetic wand. You can pick up Astral Realm at the Born Pretty Store for $5.39, which is a lot for a tiny 6ml bottle, but it does work!

Ok, so I might have messed up. When I was moving I put together a few manicures (one of which is frankly not even worth putting on the blog, so you guys will never see it), and I typed up which polishes I used and the basics of the manicure and emailed it to myself. The problem is that at the time I didn’t have internet…so when I finally got the documents on my computer and it connected to the internet, they appear to have deleted themselves!

What this means is that for this a and a few other manis, I am guessing what I did. Luckily for this particular manicure I only own one purple magnetic polish, and it easy to identify a particular stamp. But still, sorry in advance!

Also, I promise this is the last magnetic post in a while! I don’t know why I lumped them all back-to-back in my editing folder but somehow I did! Luckily I think they all look different enough that you guys aren’t ready to behead me yet :-p. So, no more magnets! Even if I love how this mani came out. Enjoy!

MOAR MAGNETS! This mani and Friday’s mani were actually painted a few weeks apart, but I ended up editing them next to each other? Who knows. This was a super duper simple mani that I painted on my way out the door, on the assumption that anything magnetic looks cool even if I have no tools!

I don’t remember why, but a lot of my polish stuff was inaccessible for a few weeks (pre-moving moving things?), so I had grabbed some simple and easy-to-make-manicure supplies including this polish, the magnet, and some gold polish. So please pardon the not perfectly straight lines, everything was free-handed!

I do love Masura magnetic polishes, the bottle is very pretty and the polish works like a dream. Anyway, the magnet can again be found at the Born Pretty Store if you’d like one for yourself for cheap! Hope you enjoyed 🙂

Magnets! I love magnetics. They make my nails look cool with little-to-no effort on my part other than holding still for a few seconds. Stamping over them just looks so cool!

Anyway, this was basically just having fun with straight magnets and some silver stamps. The magnetic polish is a teal-to-black called Whitehall by Nails Inc. The silver is Excalibur by A England and the stamp is from Moyra plate 50 – Ornaments 3.

To make this, I applied the straight line magnet on a diagonal on all the nails except my thumb. The magnet is super strong the raised teal line was incredibly sharp…until it wasn’t. As always happens, the magnetic turning point blurred as the polish dried, so I went from a super sharp line to a smudge, but it still looks cool. Honestly, maybe I need thinner coats of polish! On my thumb I tried to create a curved pattern using the small circular end of the magnetic stick. I love it. I think making this nail was more fun than using the straight line!

The double-headed magnet that I used is from the Born Pretty Store, and it is both cheap and works well. You can find it for $2.99.

Readers, I am sorry about this. I tried so hard to make it pretty for you, and I only partly succeeded! But it wasn’t my fault…

So, I received two magnets (to go with magnetic polish) from the Born Pretty Store to review, and this is the second. It is N03, a star pattern. I have seen other people try and use star patterns online, and usually it doesn’t work well. I was hopefully with this one. When I tested it on my mat it worked well, but I forgot about the curvature of my nails! Ugh. Suffice to say the center of this magnet is useless (as it appears all star magnets are) and the side that works best is still iffy. Compared to the diagonal lines magnet (which I showed almost a month ago), this one is far less useful.

I ended up decided to stamp a floral star pattern over the magnetic art, centering the flower over the “center” of the star. The only finger that REALLY picked up the magnet (aka the one where I have the flattest nail bed) was my middle finger, and there the stamp looks great. Otherwise? Meh.

Remember how a few weeks ago I posted a pretty red magnetic design…and had forgotten to post the swatch of the polish I was using? Well, here we are! And oops.

This is the other magnetic polishes I bought from Masura. It caught my eye because it appeared both copper and burgundy! I love that color combination.

What you see here are two coats (one thin and one thick, as is standard with magnetic polishes) of Evening Before the Fireplace. When first polishes, the color is mostly a copper metallic finish. The magnet raises the lines of copper so they look almost gold, and leaves behind a deep burgundy red with copious glitter. It is quite stunning!

I thought that the patter looked like hot air currents above a fire in a fireplace…which might have been inspired by the name of the polish itself. So, I decided to stamp on some gold flames and highlight them with gold glitter! The glitter is a bit hard to see, but it was fun to look at.

After last week, when I posted the magnetic lace art, I realized that I had never posted my new magnetic polishes all on their own! So here is one of the two (since you guys have seen the other one already)!

The two polishes I bought are both by Masura, because they seem to be both colored AND gold, as opposed to most of the other magnetic polishes that I have seen (which tend to run to a single color, or that color and black). The Masura’s also seemed to have more distinction between the magneted part and the base color. And glitter within them! Basically, I was intrigued.

This is two coats of Emerald Cat by Masura. The polish goes on a bright metallic green, but when the magnet is applied the whole look changes! The metallic bright green is dragged toward the magnet and turns almost golden-green, while the revealed polish is a dark forest emerald with copious glitter in it. Basically, it’s beautiful.

Once the design was on, I realized it sort of looked like a swirled forest, so I grabbed a spirally vine stamp and did a green-gold-green gradient and tried to overlay the vines on the brighter green-gold part of the base. It totally worked! I think back on when I had to use regular stampers (as opposed to the ubiquitous clear ones) and shudder.

That’s it for today! I am glad to be done with both the holiday season (which lets be honest, goes through Valentine’s day) and my boring interview nails! The rest of this week, and the foreseeable future, are a random mix of fun nails!

This mani ended up being a lot of fun! There are no stereotypical Valentine’s colors, but there are hearts and it is somewhat elegant. Subverting tropes!

I wanted to see what a lace patterned stamp would look like over a magnetic polish, and I figured my copper/burgundy magnetic was perfect for Valentine’s Day! It also helped that I was sent the ideal stamping plate to review from the Born Pretty Store (I love lace stamps, and this plate is chock full of them), AND was sent two new magnets to play with!

For years, I have only had one, somewhat weak, wavy-patterned magnet to work with. Now, I have three! The one I am showing here is a simple diagonal line design, but it is very strong and the lines come through beautifully. I am so happy. This magnet is from the Born Pretty Store as well, and is listed as “N02”, on sale for $1.49. I should probably mention that it comes with a sticker over it with the pattern printed on it…that sticker is what holds the magnet to it’s positioning stick (so don’t remove it like I did or the magnet falls right out). Clearly, the magnet is strong enough to work through the sticker!

As mentioned above, I also love this stamp. The plate has a whole bunch of lace designs, and this one is entirely hearts! There are three large hearts (which mostly face in different directions from each other) so I used each of them on a nail, ergo all my nails are slightly different! I like it. I am also officially a fan of stamping lace over magnetic designs! The stamp is on sale right now for $2.99 over at the Born Pretty Store.

That’s all for today! My last heart-themed post will go up on Wednesday, and then we can move onto things like flowers and geometric patterns. :-p I also realized that due to my ridiculous backlog of posts, the actual post where this is a new polish hasn’t gone up yet! Whoops. At some point you’ll see this same base with a wavy design but suffice to say I wanted some multicolored magnet polishes and bought two Masuras….and they are (as expected) amazing. Sorry!

I swore to myself that I wasn’t going to participate in “purse” day with the Nail Art Fashion Week thingie, but then I wandered on this tutorial by Sveta Sanders and I had to try it!

I have never tried a blobbicure before. You can see my learning curve here! (My middle and pointer fingers are the worst, pinky and thumb the best). Its fun, but odd! I don’t usually make super-thick layers of polish, and its necessary here. I bet I’ll try this again but with slightly longer nails next time! Super fast 😀

This actually looks a bit more like alligator skin, but that makes me sad, so I’m sticking with leather. I used a black base because that was what Sveta did, but I think maybe this would have looked even better with dark brown!

The theme for today was “metallic” which I mis-read as “magnetic”…and then decided magnetic polish looks metallic enough to count! So I put together a magnetic polish gradient and stamped over it.

Gradients with magnetic polish are fun…if a bit counter-intuitive! Usually you put on two layers of polish, putting the second one on particularly thick, and then hold the magnet over the polish to raise the pattern. To make a gradient, you treat it like normal polish (aka using a makeup sponge) and then add a layer of top coat. Hold the magnet over the nail once the top coat is down but still wet, and you get the pattern all the same!

I have so much fun playing with magnetic polishes! This mani (for metallic day) was inspired by a magnetic + stamp pin by nailXchange, only I chose to do the stamp over a magnetic GRADIENT because they are one of my new favorite things.

I had my long-suffering boyfriend pick out which two of my 4 magnetic polishes I should use for this gradient, and went to town! I was thinking of trying to gradient stamp as well, but decided that simple is better for something like this.

Sometimes, life is magic. To match a dress, I needed a blue/purple/silver theme. 3 out of the 4 magnetic polishes I own are teal, purple, and silver…and I had been waiting weeks to try a magnetic gradient! As I said, magic.

I read on Dressed Up Digits some weeks back that you can create a gradient with magnetic polishes just like normal polishes, and then add a slow-drying top coat and demagnetize them! Lo and behold, it totally works!

I started with a base of my purple. I added a standard gradient (make up sponge, all that jazz) with my teal. I then added some silver with saran wrap, just to make it interesting. After cleaning the mess off my fingers, I added some clear polish over the top, nail by nail, and held up the magnet. It worked! The clear polish wetted the magnetic polish enough to let the internal beads move 🙂

Although I do love magnetic polish, I think the thing that really makes this mani special is the silver polish. Magnetic polish usually gives the illusion of depth, as the blackened beads move over the colored polish. However, adding the silver saran wrap enhanced that somehow! When I move my nails it looks like black shadows moving over silver clouds, on top of a stationary teal/purple planet. I know, poetic. But I’m serious. It doesn’t come out well in photos, but this mani has some serious depth!

I almost want to go buy more magnetic polishes to try this with other colors! I briefly entertained stamping over the whole thing, but I think it would have just been too complicated. KISS!

A while ago I did some pretty cool tiger nails and some pretty awful snow leopard nails. Both of them were inspired by Lacquerish and her magnetic tiger manicure. Last time I tried this, I did not have the right type of polish at all, and did not completely read her instructions.

Turns out, the key is LAYERING magnetic polish! So, when I saw Rite Aid having a sale on Sally Hansen magnetic polish, I snatched up Kinetic Copper, just to try this manicure! Turns out it is not as translucent as her gold topper, but it does look awesome.

On all my nails except my ring finger, I started with one coat of Nails Inc Trafalgar Square (a silver-grey magnetic polish) before adding Kinetic Copper. My ring finger just got two coats of Copper. I was hoping to see more of the black from Trafalgar peeking through (as it did when I tested it on paper) but that didn’t happen. I can’t tell the nails apart! Although both do look awesome. This was using the magnet that came with Kinetic Copper. As with most metallics, this polish dried quickly.

I then went ahead and stamped over the dried polish (yes, this time I waited for it to dry completely) with bundle monster plate 223. And voila, awesomeness!

I think this manicure justifies spending $2 on Kinetic Copper :-D. Now I just need to make a magnetic gradient, a-la Dressed Up Digits!